I would remind you that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in defense of justice is no virtue.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Olympics Of Shame

A couple of years ago we witnessed the results of the earthquake and tidal wave on the residents of Thailand, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. The world responded. The US Navy had aircraft carriers with helicopters in the area within a couple of days and aid reached even the most isolated victims as quickly as humanly possible. The governments of these nations actively helped the effort. A huge outpouring of donations was generated by the NGO's who were out in the front of the relief efforts.Now we're faced with the results of a similar-scale disaster in Burma. There is a horrible difference. The government of Burma (I refuse to accept the name the illegal clique of generals running it use to describe the country they have hijacked) is refusing to allow any foreign aid to be sent to its people and is not sending any of its own. The world is sitting silently by and watching a government cause the deaths of tens of thousands of its own citizens.Well, thats nothing new. The mass deaths caused by socialist economic policies, from the artificial famines caused by Stalin in the 1930's , the mountains of corpses generated by Mao's policies, through the man-made carnage caused by the Soviets in Ethiopia in the 1980's ("We Are The World") and the ongoing nightmare of hunger in North Korea have gone uncriticized by a silent world. The worst examples of this going on right now are in Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Sudan. What do all these countries have in common? They are allied with and supported by China.China, the country which surrounded Mt Everest with troops, holding guns on the members of mountain-climbing expeditions so the Olympic Flame could scale the peak unmolested by critics of China's repulsive and vile regime. China, the country which arrests domestic opponents on trumped-up charges, executes them and sells their body parts to organ banks.China, the country who will be the host of the Olympics this year. The Olympics which will be held in a city scraped clean of the homeless and of all dogs and cats, considered unsightly by the paranoid crackpots at the head of the Chinese Communist Party and so consigned to death.The Olympics I wont be watching and whose sponsors I will not be patronizing.